Say It Is So: Google can count calories based on your food photos?

(SPOT.ph) If you watch The Biggest Loser (from whichever country), you'll notice how contestants are always given calorie-counting books to help them measure their nutrient—or lack of—intake for the day. It helps, sure, but it's not exact mathematics. There's always going to be some fry or chicken nugget that will get away.

At the recently concluded Rework Deep Learning Summit held in Boston, Massachusetts, Google research scientist Kevin Murphy revealed a project equipped with algorithms that could estimate the calorie count of a dish—based on a photo. Yup, prep your Instagram accounts. According to a Popular Science report, the project is called Im2Calories and it was tested on two eggs, two pancakes, and three strips of bacon. Im2Calories makes its estimate via the size of the dish relative to the plate and add-ons. Hi-res images are not required.

Popular Science notes that Im2Calories is still in its infancy stages with quirks like wrong detection and basing the calorie count of a particular element on published standards. Still, it carries hope as a food-planning and diary tool.